Final Semester Blues

Thinking back on it, I know the exact moment that I should’ve sought professional help. By professional help, I don’t mean therapist, questionably licensed doctor, yogi, hypnotist, nutritionist, or morally wrecked best friends (because I had all of those). I mean rehab.

It’s 3:00PM on the Friday of my last semester of college, and I hear a banging so loud you would not fucking believe. For a solid fifteen minutes I do my best to ignore the migraine-inducing noise, but even Lindsay Lohan has her limits. I open my eyes to pitch black. My immediate reaction is to allow a panic attack to set in, because surely I’ve gone blind. Then it resonates in my drugged up brain that I’m wearing a sleeping mask.

“WHAT THE FUCK” I scream, not so much at the person making this noise, but at the sound itself. “Jesus fucking Christ. SHUT THE FUCK UP!”

I pull my pink, lacy sleeping mask off of my face and throw it against my bedroom wall. I jump out of bed, irrationally angry at this mystery Satan for waking me from my slumber. The banging continues like a bad fuck.

“GODDAMMIT, I’M COMING!”

I stumble around my room and glance in the mirror. I look at myself, but even the disgusting sight doesn’t jolt me from my state of deliriousness. Here I am. My hair is matted. My face is streaked with overpriced black shit purchased from a Nordstrom counter. I’m too skinny except in my stomach which is bloated from too much alcohol. I’m wearing a t-shirt stolen from my roommate, stained and wreaking of tequila, no less. She’ll be pleased. No pants.

“UNIVERSITY POLICE.”

The statement jars me from my self-loathing. Ah, Satan has a name.

I look around my apartment, even more confused. It’s light out. There are no boys passed out. Empty wine bottles and vodka liters litter the coffee table, but that is really just par for the course at this point. What the fuck? It’s been a really long time since my last arrest – an MIP charge which was just clear entrapment – and I really was not in a mental (or clothing) state to handle another one. God-fucking-dammit. I do a quick scan of the apartment for drugs and proceed to the front door to make Satan shut the fuck up.

“Hello?”

I pull the door open and rudely question the female hobbit of a campus police officer standing in front of me. She stares wide-eyed at me, briefly ignoring the fact that I am not wearing pants (for which I am grateful) and proceeds to walk into my apartment.

“Umm…not to be rude. But like, don’t you need a warrant or something to just walk into someone’s home.” I feel really proud of myself for maintaining my cool and speaking in legal jargon. Clearly the SVU marathons are paying off.

Frodo ignores my question and gives me the side eye. “Ma’am” she states in a frightening low voice. “We received calls from your friends and your parents. They were concerned that you weren’t answering their phone calls. They were afraid that you died.”

Yep. There it is. That is literally the lowest point you can ever reach.

“That I died?” I squeak. I’m super annoyed now.

“Yes. They thought you might have fallen or had alcohol poisoning. I thought you might’ve killed yourself when you weren’t answering.” She snorts at her last sentence.

Nope. This is it. This is the lowest point. This campus police officer is inside of my apartment at 3:00PM on a Friday because she thought I offed myself.

I stare back at her and spit out. “You would think you’d be a lot nicer to someone on suicide watch. Clearly I’m in a fragile state.” Immediately I regretted this statement. I can probably count on one hand the number of times I’ve wanted to take back my words, but when you mouth off to a female midget with a baton who could easily lock your ass up in the mental institute of a public hospital, you realize you need to watch your fucking step.

I start back peddling so fast you’d think I was doing it to burn off my freshman 15. I convince this woman that I had fallen asleep and simply not heard my phone going off. “I don’t have class on Fridays. I was just napping,”
I muster.

She finally exits my apartment, but not before doing a once-over to check for any nooses. Still pantsless, I walk into the kitchen, pour a vodka rocks to cure my hangover, and plug in my iPhone. 47 text messages and 9 voicemails later, I am met with the words of my mother, sisters, dad’s secretaries, and best friends. I shoot out a mass: “I’m alive. Was sleeping. Thanks for calling the cops, assholes” text to all of the aforementioned.

“WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU GIVE ME?” are the next words curdling out of my foodless and now vodka filled body. I’m met with silence and proceed to yell it again. “WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU GIVE ME?” I scream at my helpless and unprepared little. I go through the incredibly embarrassing, pantsless, and noose-searching, past twenty minutes of my life.

“It like wasn’t even a big deal. It was just a roofie. You were so upset about graduating, you practically begged me for it. God, how rude are you? You’re welcome.”

Obviously she wasn’t grasping the seriousness of the issue. As her Big (in name only), and her mentor, and the person who was a fucking year ahead of her in life, it was my duty to explain this to her: “I mean obviously I appreciate drugs. I’m not fucking rude,” I say to her. “And like, ordinarily that would be no big deal, but a female hobbit just tried to fucking citizen’s arrest me, and by citizen’s arrest, I mean real arrest, because she was a real fucking cop.”

“She didn’t try to arrest you. You’re being dramatic. If anything, you would’ve spent like a day in the hospital. It’s not a big deal. You would’ve gotten flowers and shit.”

It was at this point that I just lost it. It took about 15 minutes, but after explaining that I would not have spent the day in a cozy rehab in Arizona, but rather an overcrowded room in a public city, surrounded by people who likely didn’t have teeth and probably wore clothes they got off the rack, she got it.

“Shit. I’m so sorry. But also think of the weight you would’ve lost from the stress,” she says, defensively.

“Whatever,” I say so stoically, “but if there were ever a time I needed to be drugged, it would be after my false alarm suicide attempt. You better fucking be here in five.”

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From Rush To Rehab (@catie__warren) is a semi-fuctioning adult who has been celebrating her 21st birthday for the past three years. She attended college in the nation’s capital and to this day is angry that Pit Bull lied to her, as you cannot, in fact, party on The White House lawn. Prior to her success with TSM, Rehab was most famous for being featured in her hometown newspaper regarding her 5th grade Science Fair Project for which she did not place. In her spare time, she enjoys attributing famous historical quotes to Marilyn Monroe and getting in fights with thirteen year olds on twitter.
Email: catie@grandex.co